I’m reading Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue, in which he briefly notes: -
…many Britons have to have the distinction between got and gotten explained to them…
But he doesn’t go on to explain what the distinction actually is. I hadn’t been aware that there was a difference; I had always assumed that the two were interchangeable. Google doesn’t offer an explanation, just various pages with example sentences, which don’t clarify anything for me.
Would the Dopers care to throw some light on the situation?
I think it’s something like this: in North America you can say, “I got” (past tense) and “I have gotten” (present perfect tense). In Britain, “gotten” is not used, and you say, “I have got”.
Gotten is basically used for when the non-possessive meanings of get are meant.
“I’ve gotten a new car” has a slightly different meaning than “I’ve got a new car”. The latter implies I currently have it in my possession, while the former merely means I acquired one.
It’s exactly the same as the difference between “ate” and “eaten”, or “broke” and “broken”. The former is the preterite, the latter is the past participle. For many words, these coincide, but for some, they don’t. In American English, the two don’t coincide for “get”.
The one idiomatic wrinkle on top of this is that “has got” can be used, with the meaning “possesses”. This doesn’t follow from any more general principles (you can’t say “has ate”, for example); it’s just an idiomatic form that happens to exist in addition to everything else.
(On the other hand, “has gotten” exists by general principles, as the perfect aspect form of “get”, in exactly the same way that “has eaten” exists as the perfect aspect form of “eat” or “has broken” exists as the perfect aspect form of “break”.
Note also that “John has got” can be contracted to “John’s got”. Again, this isn’t necessarily true by general principle (you can’t contract the very similar “John has a shoe” to “John’s a shoe”, for example), but just happens to be true. You can also contract “John has gotten” to “John’s gotten”, by the same general principle that lets you contract “John has eaten” to “John’s eaten” or “John has broken” to “John’s broken” [of course, in each case, these contractions have the ambiguity that they could be expanded to use “is” instead of “has” as well, but that’s got nothing to do with anything].)
On the use of “-en” in forming the perfect tenses, I’ve noticed this:
– Those regular verbs that use “-ed” to form the regular past tense, mostly also use “-ed” to form the perfect tenses. e.g.: John walked out. John has walked out.
– All verbs that use anything other than “-ed” to form the regular past tense, mostly use “-en” to form the perfect tenses. e.g.: John ate. John has eaten. John rides the bike. John rode. John has ridden.
On the one hand, I will note that a significant word in the above is “mostly”, English being as full of exceptions as it is. But can anybody think of any exceptions?
– Can anyone name a verb with past tense “-ed” that does NOT also use “-ed” for the perfect?
– Can anyone name a verb with past tense other than “-ed” that does NOT use “-en” (or at least something similar, like flew…flown) for the perfect?
In Saskatchewan, there’s also the distinction between “bought” and “boughten”.
“Boughten” is used almost entirely as an adjective. “That’s boughten bread.” => bread bought from the store, because I was too lazy/busy to bake some myself.
Yes, it’s an implied criticism of the person who takes the easy way of going to the store, instead of the pioneer methods of self-sufficiency.
Just tonight, the Piper Cub and I were making spaghetti with tomato sauce with tomatoes that he and Mrs Piper grew this summer, and and I caught myself complimenting him by saying “We’re making sauce with your home-grown tomatoes, not boughten tomatoes.”
There are all kinds of examples for this: sing sang sung and all the other -ing -ang -ung verbs are perhaps the most common. Not to mention verbs like come, came, come that repeat the present tense or verbs like catch, caught, caught in which the past and perfect are the same.
I always think you can hear Alec Guinness cringe when he delivers Obi Wan Kenobi’s line “he thought your father should have stayed here and not gotten involved”.
I have heard the boughten construction on rare occasion in the US, too. But not in a critical way, more like, “Your church outfit (or other fancy clothes) looks boughten,” with an approving nod. Or if you’ve sewn an item of clothing, “It looks just boughten!”
Rural use, definitely.
There isn’t a clean break, but I tend to use “have gotten” and “have got” to mean slightly different things. When the object is acquired by the subject of the sentence then “gotten” is preferred.
But when the subject simply just possesses the object, I’d prefer “got”.
While in the first sentence with “gotten” I’d sometime use “got” instead, I’d never use “gotten” in the second sentence.
